Deconstructing Code

New .xxx domain will be reserved for porn

New .xxx domain will be reserved for porn:
Numerous groups, including several outspoken U.S. politicians, have been demanding for some time a separate Internet domain for pornography in a move to prevent sexually explicit content from landing on the screens of young Net users. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers took a big step Wednesday to meet that demand by approving a plan for pornographic Web sites to use new addresses that end with ".xxx."

Posted by rshah on June 02, 2005| Comments (1)

Get Out of My Namespace

Get Out of My Namespace
The world is running out of names. The roster of possible names seems almost infinite, but the demand is even greater. With the rise of instantaneous communication, business spreading across the globe and the Internet annihilating geography, conflict is rampant in this realm of language and of intellectual property. Rules are up for grabs. Laws regarding names have never been in such disarray.

Posted by rshah on March 22, 2004| Comments (0)

Firms Ignore Kids-Only Internet Domain

Firms Ignore Kids-Only Internet Domain
A little more than 1,500 people have plunked down $100 to $160 to buy a dot-kids address since the addresses went on sale last June, but only eight are attached to live Web sites. Twelve sites have been submitted for a mandatory content review.

Posted by rshah on March 03, 2004| Comments (0)

The recent brouhaha with Site Finder

The recent brouhaha with Site Finder
The technical problems with wildcards in top-level domains are probably insurmountable; more importantly, any usability benefit to users from such things is unclear. It's easy enough for a Web browser to implement such a feature, and the resulting feature can be enabled or disabled by users as they wish. Wildcard DNS records, by contrast, affect every aspect of network functionality, not just the browser.

Posted by rshah on November 19, 2003| Comments (0)

VeriSign to revive redirect service

VeriSign to revive redirect service
VeriSign will give a 30- to 60-day notice before resuming a controversial and temporarily suspended feature that redirected many .com and .net domains, company representatives said Wednesday.

Posted by rshah on October 20, 2003| Comments (0)

VeriSign sells off domain registrar

VeriSign sells off domain registrar
It's giving up the registrar business, which has become essentially a commodity service in a field in which competition has been heating up. What it's keeping is the registry, recently renamed as VeriSign Naming and Directory Services--and which operates in a field where the company still has a relative monopoly. The registry business, according to VeriSign, is the backbone of a global .com and .net domain name infrastructure that handles over 10 billion interactions per day.

Posted by rshah on October 20, 2003| Comments (0)

ISC to Cut Off Site Finder

ISC to Cut Off Site Finder
VeriSign's controversial "typo-squatting" Site Finder service is about to be bypassed by an emergency software patch to many of the Internet's backbone computers. The Internet Software Consortium, a nonprofit that publishes BIND, the software that runs many of the Net's domain name servers, is about to release an emergency patch to block VeriSign's new Site Finder service.

Posted by rshah on September 17, 2003| Comments (0)

Economics of Kid-Friendly Domain Questioned

Economics of Kid-Friendly Domain Questioned
Noss went on to charge that kids.us has "absolutely zero" probability of achieving that ubiquity and is nothing more than "an exercise in making politicians who don't understand the medium feel good."

Posted by rshah on January 12, 2003| Comments (0)

President Signs 'Dot-Kids' Legislation

President Signs 'Dot-Kids' Legislation
President Bush today signed legislation that seals off a G-rated "neighborhood" for kids on the World Wide Web. The Dot-Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act creates a dot-kids domain within America's dot-us addressing space.

Posted by rshah on December 05, 2002| Comments (0)

RealNames, Pioneer of Keywords, Shutting Down

RealNames, Pioneer of Keywords, Shutting Down
RealNames Corp., one of the firms that pioneered the keyword approach to Internet addressing, will go out of business, and as a result thousands of Internet keywords will go dark before the end of June, according to a source familiar with the situation. Triggering the shutdown was a decision by Microsoft Corp., which allows keywords to resolve in its popular Internet Explorer Web browser, not to renew its exclusive contract with RealNames, the source said.

Posted by rshah on May 13, 2002| Comments (0)

Indian tribes gain domain name suffix

Indian tribes gain domain name suffix
GSA grants the .gov domain name to federal agencies, and Interior, through its Bureau of Indian Affairs, handles relations with the sovereign tribes. According to the announcement on Friday, a tribe’s domain name will include a hyphen, the letters nsn—for native sovereign nation—and the .gov designation. The tribes’ sites now follow their names with .nsn.us.

Posted by rshah on April 30, 2002| Comments (0)

The Story of '.us' Has Its Critics

The Story of '.us' Has Its Critics
NeuStar Said to Neglect Public Interest in Not Setting Aside Some Domain Names

Posted by rshah on April 30, 2002| Comments (0)

ICANN Seeks Out Dot-Org Operator

ICANN Seeks Out Dot-Org Operator
The organization that manages the Internet's global addressing system today kicked off its search for the next steward of "dot-org" - the online neighborhood that that is home to many of the world's nonprofit groups.

Posted by rshah on April 24, 2002| Comments (0)

Lurid links: Expired domain names point to porn

Lurid links: Expired domain names point to porn
The number of domain names being allowed to expire - intentionally or accidentally - is at an all-time high. Now shady middlemen called traffic aggregators are increasingly buying these names and redirecting corresponding Web traffic to other sites, primarily porn and gambling venues.

Posted by rshah on March 04, 2002| Comments (0)

Newest Suffixes Help to Increase Net's Population

Newest Suffixes Help to Increase Net's Population
Among the new TLDs, ".info," has been the most popular, with about 700,000 registrations since September. About half a million addresses have been registered with ".biz" endings. The ".coop" suffix, which is less than 2 weeks old, has about 5,000.

Posted by rshah on February 11, 2002| Comments (0)

EP Committee wants to amend '.EU' Regulation

EP Committee wants to amend '.EU' Regulation
The establishment of an '.EU' top level domain name is included in the eEurope programme. The Council reached a common position on 6 November 2001 on the draft Regulation on the implementation of '.EU'.

Posted by rshah on February 01, 2002| Comments (0)

It's a smaller World Wide Web after all

It's a smaller World Wide Web after all
The number of sites on the Internet has slipped along with a recent decline in registrations of addresses ending in domains such as .com, according to a study released in Jan 2002 by Netcraft.

Posted by rshah on January 07, 2002| Comments (0)

Sites Forlorn When Reborn as Porn

Sites Forlorn When Reborn as Porn
Images of "Euro Teen Sluts" appear where Manchester, Iowa's city government information used to be. And teachers looking for Home Education Magazine at its former online address will find a link to "gang bang models," but absolutely no helpful tips on home schooling. These are just a few of the growing number of local governments, church groups and nonprofit organizations that have recently seen their homepages turned into smut dens.

Posted by rshah on December 10, 2001| Comments (0)

Government Awards '.us' To NeuStar

Government Awards '.us' To NeuStar
The U.S. Commerce Department today awarded control of the ".us" Internet domain to NeuStar Inc., a Washington-based firm that also has a hand in operating the recently created ".biz" domain.

Posted by rshah on October 30, 2001| Comments (0)

U.S. hands control of .edu'' domain to nonprofit group

U.S. hands control of .edu'' domain to nonprofit group
The U.S. government said Monday it has finalized plans to hand over the education-focused .edu'' Internet domain next month to Educause, a nonprofit group representing college technology departments.

Posted by rshah on October 30, 2001| Comments (0)

Net domain 'fiasco' over .info

Net domain 'fiasco' over .info
Up to a quarter of the early registrations for the new .info domain name could be bogus. A study of 11,000 registrations has shown a failure of the steps taken to stop people winning control of domains they do not have the right to run.

Posted by rshah on October 15, 2001| Comments (0)

Filth, Smut Live in New Domains

Filth, Smut Live in New Domains
Now that new dot-biz and dot-info Web extensions are on their way, however, coveters of obscene addresses finally have some new options. As online registries prepare to roll out the two new top-level domains this fall, Internet regulators aren't limiting what kinds of terms can be included in a Web address. As a result, choice obscene domains are once again up for grabs.

Posted by rshah on August 03, 2001| Comments (0)

Government Plans Expanded Use of .US

Government Plans Expanded Use of .US
But with .com and .net addresses reaching a level of saturation, and with domain-name registration becoming big business, the government is moving to broaden the commercial use of .us with a plan hotly opposed by a coalition of nonprofit and consumer groups.

Posted by rshah on July 25, 2001| Comments (0)

Verisign Shuts Down Domain Policy List

Verisign Shuts Down Domain Policy List
Without warning or explanation, and without even providing list members an opportunity to reorganize, Verisign today closed the long-running 'DOMAIN-POLICY' list, see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on May 25, 2001| Comments (0)

Registries prepare for domain crush

Registries prepare for domain crush
Companies in charge of the newest top-level domains gave a glimpse of their plans for handling the online land grab that's sure to follow the launch of new Internet addresses.

Posted by rshah on May 08, 2001| Comments (0)

.xxx may mark new Net address

.xxx may mark new Net address
New.net, an Internet start-up that is trying to speed up the domain-name registration process, got a step closer to achieving its goal Monday. The company said it has inked a deal with Juno Online Services to allow subscribers to register Web addresses ending in unconventional suffixes, such as .game and .free.

Posted by rshah on April 26, 2001| Comments (0)

EDUCAUSE to control .EDU

EDUCAUSE to control .EDU
The Commerce Department's selection of Educause, a nonprofit consortium, replaces VeriSign as the assigner of Internet addresses ending in dot-edu. VeriSign, a private firm, retains the right to assign addresses ending with dot-com, dot-org and dot-net.

Posted by rshah on April 12, 2001| Comments (0)

New.net Strikes a Deal

New.net Strikes a Deal
New.net who sells unsanctioned domain names has reached deals with five software companies to promote the use of such suffixes as .kids and .travel. New.net expects the deals will let more than 20 million additional Internet users reach sites using those names. The new deals, expected to be announced Monday, involve the software companies packaging their products with a New.net browser plug-in that could recognize the unsanctioned sites.

Posted by rshah on April 09, 2001| Comments (0)

Paul Garrin of Name.Space

Paul Garrin of Name.Space
While other so-called alternative root servers began offering a limited number of unsanctioned addresses like .biz and .med in the mid '90s, Garrin had a much more radical idea. Working with former hackers like Phiber Optik and system administrators, he set up his own network of servers in the U.S. and Europe that allows users to register for just about dot-anything, see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on April 04, 2001| Comments (0)

Confusion Is Domain Problem

Confusion Is Domain Problem
Three companies are currently registering dot-xxx domains, but those who want a piece of the action can't be guaranteed who will be able to access their sites, and for how long.

Posted by rshah on March 15, 2001| Comments (0)

Dyson on New.Net

Dyson on New.Net
Former ICANN chairwoman Esther Dyson says a new domain name system threatens to disrupt the Internet

Posted by rshah on March 14, 2001| Comments (0)

Three ISPs Join New.net

Three ISPs Join New.net
According to ISP Planet News, Internet service providers Earthlink, NetZero, and Excite@Home will configure their systems so users will not have to download the plugin. The article notes that this means 16 million new users for New.net.

Posted by rshah on March 06, 2001| Comments (0)

Alternative domains via web browser plug in

Alternative domains via web browser plug in
New.net, a spinoff of Idealab, is challenging the authority of the Internet's primary ruling body by preparing to sell up to a dozen unsanctioned TLDs that it plans to administer on its own, see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on March 05, 2001| Comments (0)

New Domains Delayed, Open to Corps. First

New Domains Delayed, Open to Corps. First
The article highlighted three main areas of concern - some registrars having financial problems, the inexperience of ICANN's staff at getting the contracts done and (of main concern to most people) that some registrars will give trademark holders first shot at registering domains. Apparently at least one registrar, RegistryPro (.pro) will be "..allowing individuals and companies that own a particular trademark to have first crack at signing up the corresponding domain name.

Posted by rshah on March 05, 2001| Comments (0)

Verisign will surrender control of .org and .net

Verisign will surrender control of .org and .net
VeriSign Inc., which coordinates the world's master list of Web addresses, has agreed to surrender control over "org" and "net" suffixes in exchange for keeping long-term rights to manage lucrative "com" names, see also Slashdot

Posted by rshah on March 01, 2001| Comments (0)

New Language Choices for Domain Names

New Language Choices for Domain Names
VeriSign opened up registrations for Internet domain names in more than 70 additional, mostly European languages. Internet users will be able to choose Web site and e-mail addresses that use special letters, accents and marks particular to Western European languages such as French, German, and Spanish, to supplement the standard Roman letters and numbers currently used.

Posted by rshah on February 28, 2001| Comments (0)

Domain Stats

Posted by rshah on February 26, 2001| Comments (0)

New Top Level Domains

New Top Level Domains
New top-level domain names are coming online. They'll confuse consumers and cost companies millions. But, hey, book.store could be a good thing.

Posted by rshah on January 18, 2001| Comments (0)

Using Bots to Get Domain Names

Using Bots to Get Domain Names
When the new general-purpose suffixes are finally offered to the public, hackers with fast "bots" will likely claim batches of new names at 12:01 a.m. on opening day. This is a potential windfall for the wily at the expense of legitimate businesses.

Posted by rshah on January 18, 2001| Comments (0)

Choosing a Domain Name Registrar

Choosing a Domain Name Registrar
There are plenty of options for recording your Internet identity. Here's what to look for.

Posted by rshah on January 18, 2001| Comments (0)

Palestinian Domain Name Languishes

Palestinian Domain Name Languishes
lthough the dot-ps domain was properly delegated last year, it has languished. Only one domain name is operational -- gov.ps -- while the domain name's administrator and the Palestinians figure out the tricky business of running a domain name registry and registering domains.

Posted by rshah on January 12, 2001| Comments (0)

WHO Bid To Regulate Health Sites

WHO Bid To Regulate Health Sites
The World Health Organization wants to improve the quality of health-related web sites. They want a new TLD -- .health -- to be introduced. All .health sites would then be regulated by the WHO. See also Politech

Posted by rshah on November 15, 2000| Comments (0)

Shared Registration System

Posted by rshah on November 14, 2000| Comments (0)

AUSTRALIAN ISPS BLOCK COMPETITOR SITE

AUSTRALIAN ISPS BLOCK COMPETITOR SITE
DOMAIN name resellers have taken direct action in a dispute over business tactics, blocking a competitor's website. A group of resellers and Internet service providers have accused Melbourne firm Domain Name Authority of Australia (DNA) of tricking their customers, and some are even blocking their customers' access to DNA's website and redirecting them to a "consumer alert".

Posted by rshah on November 03, 2000| Comments (0)

Domain Name Law Reports

Domain Name Law Reports
A free, fully indexed and keyword searchable database of summarized ICANN domain name dispute case law.

Posted by rshah on November 02, 2000| Comments (0)

Father Considers Proposing

Father Considers Proposing
San Diego father Page Howe is looking to build a children's playground on the Net by applying for a new Internet address system that ends with ".kids."

Posted by rshah on October 04, 2000| Comments (0)

Oregon town adopts

Oregon town adopts
See also Cnet

Posted by rshah on September 08, 2000| Comments (0)

Internet Geography Project: Putting place back in cyberspace

Internet Geography Project: Putting place back in cyberspace
The Internet Geography Project has data on the number and geographical distribution of gTLD domain names (com, org, and net) for July 1998, January 1999, July 1999, January 2000 and July 2000.

Posted by rshah on September 06, 2000| Comments (0)